Alan Watts` Speeches Reveal Philosophy Of Nature

May 30, 1991|By Sandy Bauers, Knight-Ridder Newspapers.

Listeners can get a vivid picture of Alan W. Watts from a new tape,

``Man, Nature and the Nature of Man`` (90 minutes, $10.95) from Audio Renaissance. It is a collection of excerpts from the speeches of Watts, one of the foremost Western interpreters of Eastern thought.

Surely, Watts prepared his speeches, but it doesn`t sound as if he stuck to much of an outline or even used notes. Often in these recordings he speaks extemporaneously, and sometimes he makes impromptu, humorous asides, ending with everything from a chuckle to a hearty laugh. He`s clearly talking with-not just to-his audience.

Taped informal conversations are a wonderful adjunct to the books-on-cassette industry. More than a book-most of which are rewritten and doctored well beyond a revealing spontaneity-these unpremeditated snippets give a compelling sense of the person.

The quality of the Watts tapes-given that all of the recordings were made before 1973, when he died-is excellent. What little scratchiness there is, rather than being annoying, just makes the recording seem all the more authentic.

Credit is due to Audio Renaissance, the company that screened hours and hours of material, then embarked on another tedious process to electronically clean up the recordings.

``Man, Nature and the Nature of Man`` is the fourth in a series of Watts audios that made its debut in 1989 with ``The Way of Zen.`` Audio Renaissance President Bill Hartley remembers the year he first read that book-1958-and says, ``It had a profound effect on me. It is a classic of its ilk.``

Ralph Blum, an acquaintance of Watts` and a student of Eastern philosophy, narrated that first audio, which was abridged. The production was interspersed with excerpts of recorded Watts from the archival tape library of Sandy Jacobs, who had worked with Watts and recorded him at the Eslen Institute in Big Sur, Calif., and elsewhere.

The production worked so well that Audio Renaissance followed it with

``Zen Practice, Zen Art`` and ``The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are`` (each is 90 minutes and costs $9.95).

Watts` son, Mark, heard the three recordings and contacted Audio Renaissance to tell them he also had tapes of his father`s speeches. Hartley decided to release an entirely original tape compiled from those recordings.

``Man, Nature and the Nature of Man`` includes Watts` philosophy on nature and man`s place in it. Even though the speeches are about 20 years old, just about the only thing that dates them is a reference to beatniks in Sausalito, Calif. The rest of the ideas seem timely, if not exactly new.

For instance, Watts notes in one of his speeches that U.S. legislators had recently mandated stern penalties for burning the flag-an issue debated again just last year.

``And they put this law through with a great deal of patriotic oratory,`` Watts said, ``ignoring the fact entirely that these same congressmen, by acts of commission or omission, are burning up that for which the flag stands. They are allowing the utter pollution of our waters, of our atmosphere, the devastation of our forests.``

But Watts is no ranter. He sounds gentle, kind, warm and a bit of a rascal.

The excerpts are separated by short segments of music, and as Watts`

voice emerges, with the volume gradually increasing, there is an unmistakable sense that this is an important moment, if that`s not stating it too grandly. This is a beautiful recording, one that will remain in my collection.